2013 Pinot Noir

This project is helmed by James Cahill and Bryan Sypher, Tony Soter's assistant winemaker and marketing and sales director respectively at Soter Vineyards, and they are quick to assert that it is in no way a second label, but rather, as Cahill put it, "a sibling and, of course, a younger one." In fact, Soter made it clear when we tasted his wines at his Mineral Springs property in Newberg that he wants to be completely in the shadows here and he made a point not to sit in on my tasting with Cahill and Sypher the next day. "Their venture is going to rise or fall on their work," he told me. "It's their baby and I don't want to be a distraction." Cahill and Sypher have built an understated but impressive tasting room (a house, actually) in a new estate vineyard just outside Newberg in the Chehalem Mountains AVA and they plan to make single-appellation wines from the Willamette Valley's distinct AVAs in an effort "to give people the chance to check out what makes each region unique here," as Sypher put it.